The Memory Game
by LadyElaine
Summary: Morgan's Run II. Forget the cat’s eyes and legs; forget the claws and spines and venom; forget the healing factor that only works when I’m comatose. Sometimes I think my real mutant 'power' is running away.
1. Blink

Title: The Memory Game

Author: LadyElaine

Summary: Forget the cat's eyes and legs; forget the claws and spines and venom, and the overblown immune and digestive systems; forget the healing factor that only works when I'm comatose. Sometimes I think my real mutant "power" is running away.

Rating: R

Disclaimer: The characters and situations of _X-Men_ belong to Stan Lee, Marvel, and 20th Century Fox. My only profit is (hopefully) feedback.

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The Memory Game 

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I. **Blink**

Tree branches whipped across my face and neck. The piercing lights from the helicopters (I thought there were only two, but I couldn't be sure--and hey, two's enough!) tried to pin me to the ground, but somehow I kept slipping out from under them. Another wave of mental pressure swept over me, flattening me to the ground for a moment.

Finally I got back to the house and ran in through the kitchen door. It was still unlocked, just as I'd left it, and all the lights were out. 

I had to stop for a second.

It was in here that It had happened to Robert, right after It had happened to me. I still didn't know what It was, but I'd been so stupid...

__

When Rob hit the floor, I was still shaking. I don't know what the hell I was thinking--just, we needed help. I grabbed the phone and dialed 911. The line must have picked up automatically, because there was no answer--but in the background I could hear screaming.

"Hello?" I yelled anyway. "We need help! My name is Melody Morgan, I don't know the address, but it's a house out in this wildlife reserve, and Rob's... Please, you have to answer!"

And then the screaming on the other end of the phone stopped. After a long moment, a shaky voice said, "Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?"

I looked down at where Robert lay. He wasn't breathing. I dropped the phone and ran. 

Clapping my hands to the sides of my head, I tried to push away the insistent memories and stumbled out the back door. I could still hear the helicopters, and the wind was making a mess of the area, but I managed to get the cellar door unlatched. I scrambled in and huddled against the far wall, seeking whatever safety the chill, damp room might offer.

And then I couldn't hear the helicopters anymore. The wind was still howling, though, audible even past the closed cellar door, but it didn't seem like the house was going anywhere anytime soon. My quills were still standing on end, but I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was sleep. For a few years, maybe.

Everything had happened so fast. That's what folks say after any sort of emergency, and I suppose it's true. My heart pounded against my ribcage. It sounded like the _thup-thup-thup_ of the helicopters. It sounded like the pulse of my terror every time I felt another mental sweep.

Except that these sweeps were different. With them came memories that I couldn't escape.

__

"How long had you known, Ian?" That was Doctor Dave, so quiet and calm that I knew he must have been angry. 

Blink.

__

The goat had been scared off, but the rabbits and chickens were as oblivious as only rabbits and chickens can be. The dog was gone. So were the cats. 

Blink.

__

I tripped over Bert's body, and Maurice fell on top of me. One hand kept the gun away from my head long enough for me to bury the claws of the other hand in his throat. 

Blink.

__

"Flatscan blood is better for the complexion, you know." 

Blink.

__

I took to the trees when I saw him. He was grilling venison over a campfire, his rifle perched against the same tree as him. He sat on the bare ground, one leg tossed easily over the other. 

Blink.

__

Always the gentleman, Magneto pulled a handkerchief from his pocket for me. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose, and he threw away the ruined little scrap of cloth that was left. It would have been funny, under almost any other circumstance. 

Blink.

__

"Let us help you," the professor said softly. Any minute now, I'd feel a pressure on my mind to do what he asked. Any minute now.... 

And then the door creaked, and I could see the beam of a flashlight sweeping over the stairs. 

"No, no, no, no..." I moaned. Why couldn't they just leave me alone? Ever since It had happened, the hatred of mutants had been stronger than ever. Packs of mutant hunters roamed everywhere, from inner-city sewers to all the way out here in the sticks. And it seemed like they all wanted me.

I squinted, trying to see past the glare of the flashlight, but my eyes stung. Night vision's great, sure--except for when someone flashes a blinding light at you. There was a shuffling, uncertain step, and I looked again. The figure silhouetted behind the light almost looked familiar.

__

Go away, I thought at it. _Just, please go away._ I shut my eyes, as if that would be any kind of help.

"Melody? Melody, honey?"

My eyes snapped open again. "...Mom?"


	2. Warmth and Food

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II. Warmth and Food 

Forget the cat's eyes and legs; forget the claws and spines and venom, and the overblown immune and digestive systems; forget the healing factor that only works when I'm comatose.

Sometimes I think my real mutant "power" is running away.

I ran away from home after becoming a mutant. Well, I guess I was born a mutant, but it was my dad's fault that I got a dose of the radiation from Magneto's mutant-making machine at Ellis Island. That's what brought all this weird shit out. Who knows, if it hadn't been for dear old dad, maybe I'd have been as normal-looking as most mutants out there.

Mutants among us. Cue the Twilight Zone music.

After I got shot by some hunter who may or may not have thought I was just an animal, I tried pretty hard to stay away from civilization. I had a few encounters, all of which drove in the fact that I'm not something you want to bring home for a nice family dinner. 

Then I met up with Xavier's gang, ran away from Xavier's gang, met up with Magneto's gang, ran away from Magneto's gang, met up with Xavier's gang again, ran away from Xavier's gang again... You get the picture.

I'd been running for so long, I forgot what it was like to have a home. Until I finally found one again. 

I had it good. I'm talking regular meals and a warm den good. Sunday paper good, even. Who'da thunk it, Melody Run-Away-From-Freakin'-Everyone Morgan had an actual human being for a friend.

He didn't start out that way, of course. I think maybe I scared him as bad as he scared me, that first time we saw each other. I'd settled--temporarily, I thought--in a good-sized stretch of some wildlife preserve somewhere in the northeast. I should have kept going, but....

I mean, this place was perfect. Well, perfect if you're a feral mutant like me. I don't need a lot of space to live in--it's not like I've got any personal possessions, after all--but I do like a lot of room to roam. Makes it easier to run away and hide, when you get the feeling you're being watched. 

But the only time recently that I'd had to worry was when the other large, furry predator-types came around. There was a small pack of real, live honest-to-National-Geographic wolves in the same area. But they knew about me, same as I knew about them, and we pretty much kept our distance from each other.

I can run a good ten, twelve miles in a day, and this wild land had nice, cozy shelters in almost every corner that I might find myself. There was a copse of trees, for example, that had grown so closely entwined that it was like a little tent inside. Almost waterproof in the summer, but chilly in the winter. In another place, I had a lean-to woven from fallen branches, which I piled grass, dirt, and leaves on top of to camouflage. Before long, it was a handy little pocket in the ground, overgrown with brush. Stuff like that--little places to hide, to sleep; nothing permanent.

Then there was this cave--a real, actual Batman and Robin job. Without the bats. The floor was packed earth, so no dust to get in my fur, which I hate. Dead bugs and icky shit like that, but nothing I couldn't clean out. Pretty soon, I had it lined with soft grass, which is easier to sleep on than the hard ground.

I didn't mean to make it a home. It just kind of... happened.

Warmth and food. Food and warmth. Nothing else matters. Unless you happen to be a wild mutant pretending that she really couldn't care less if she never saw another human face again. Key word there: pretending.

It was such a pretty day outside. Warm sun, a few clouds. There's a little clearing about a half-mile east of my cave, where this purely gigantic chunk of slate sits right in the middle, as if Nature decided she needed a footstool. I used it to sunbathe. 

Not like I can actually get a tan, not covered head to toe in thick black fur--except for the webbing on my dorsal spines. That's the only bare skin I've got. And it feels oh, so good to let the sun beat down on it. I'm not really sure when I started my little ritual, but every few days, if there was a good sun out, I'd go lay out on that sunning rock, raise my little sail, and just bask.

I'd have been purring, if I could have.

But, see--that was my mistake. That, and staying in one place too long.

So like I said, there I was, laid out on that rock, soaking up the crisp mid-autumn sun. You'd think I would have heard this fellow coming through the brush, but some folks have a natural talent for quiet. That, and I was half asleep, and too content to bother moving. 

I opened up one eye, wondering what sort of animal was passing through--and I saw him. He was dressed in hiking boots, jeans and a blue flannel shirt, he had bright red hair, and he was holding something that looked like a television antenna on steroids. His mouth dropped open, his face turned stark white, and he started backing away like he'd seen a ghost. Of course, I wasn't much better. I let out a godawful shriek, jumped off the rock, and ran like there was no tomorrow.

Like the idiot that I am, I went back to my cave.

He must have tracked me, I suppose. Not too difficult, not when there was enough soft, damp ground to hold my footprints. My legs are bent at the knees and ankles, and I walk balanced on my toes. Makes for great running, jumping, and kicking, but how many two-legged big cats are there in the world? And when I go on all fours, it gets even better. Hand prints on one end, paw prints on the other.

Just think of the fun I could have with Bigfoot hunters.

A few days later, when I woke up in the morning, there was something on the ground just outside the mouth of the cave. I didn't spot it at first, but something just wasn't right. When I inched out, crouching, my spines erect in fright, my hand touched it. I jerked back, blinked, picked it up, and giggled a little.

It was a hairbrush. A red hairbrush. No wonder I hadn't seen it--I'm colorblind when it comes to red, part of my altered vision. I've gotten used to it, I guess; it's not like I mind being able to see in the dark, after all.

But... A _hairbrush_? Of all the silly little things this guy could have left me to say Hello....


	3. The Empty House

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III. **The Empty House**

I suspected he was watching me, so I started keeping tabs on him in return. I knew when he'd been near--he may have been a quiet woodsman, but he still left a good trail. And I knew when he left to go into town on whatever business he attended to. The thrum of his jeep could be heard for miles, telling every animal who listened that he was gone--buying food, picking up mail, visiting friends and family. The normal things that normal people do with their normal lives.

He didn't keep his doors locked. Why should he? There was no one in this lonely stretch of land to worry about--except me. I suppose he hadn't known about me long enough to change his careless habits. First, I watched for a while from a tree-lined bluff not far from his house, noting when he left, how long he spent away. Keeping tabs of the length of time between each trip. He usually spent most of one afternoon a week away from his house--not having a calendar, I suspected the usual day he spent out was either a Saturday or a Sunday.

Once I'd figured out the man's schedule, I simply waited till I saw his ridiculously purple jeep trundle down the long, earthen driveway toward the gravel road half a mile away, which led out to the highway. After sitting tight a few minutes longer, just to make sure he didn't decide he'd forgotten something, I made my way carefully down the bluff.

There's so much, I discovered, that you can tell about someone's life by what's in their house.

I peered in through the doors and windows first: a sizeable entertainment center in the den; yellow curtains framing a kitchen piled with dirty dishes; a tiny cubicle for a shower and toilet; a comfortable-looking bedroom complete with unmade bed and dirty clothes strewn everywhere. I smiled to myself and decided I wouldn't have to worry about anyone else in the house--I hadn't thought a man living way out here in the woods would be married, but you never know.

I went in through a sliding glass door leading into the den. The floor was carpeted in a comfortable beige, the kind that years of muddy footprints and spilled sodas just blend into. On one side was the entertainment center, surrounded by an enormous supply of movies. Made sense for someone living like this. 

A sudden sense of disorientation struck me--how the hell could I tell what was normal for anyone anymore? I'd been living in woods and sewers for the past five years! I sat down on the couch. Leather. It smelled homey.

I went into the bathroom. The toilet seat was up. I put it down, then sat down and peed just for the luxury of civilized plumbing. When I was done, I decided to put the toilet seat up again before wandering back into the den.

There was a pair of bookshelves side by side on the opposite wall, across from the entertainment center. A picture set on one shelf caught my eye: A man and a woman, obviously related, the former being the fellow who'd startled me. He had red hair, freckles, and an overbite, and his ears and nose were a little too big for the rest of his face. The woman had the same ears and nose, but her teeth were better, her red hair had been highlighted, and whatever freckles she may have had were covered with makeup. I thought she might be his sister. 

Lining the shelves were thick hardback books on all sorts of animals--white tail deer, moose, screech owls, black bears, wolves. Wolves. There were more books on wolves than on any other creature. And where there weren't books, there were notebooks with seemingly random numbers, letters, and dates scrawled on the spines.

Picking one notebook out, I flipped it open. At the front was a full-page color photograph of an albino wolf--a real albino, with red eyes and a pink nose. I remembered seeing a white wolf around a few times. It liked to run alone a lot. "Luna" was written at the bottom of the photo: she, then, not it. The rest of the pages were filled with messy notes on dates, locations, and behaviors.

Suddenly the pieces fit together. I'd seen enough of my fellow predators to have an idea of their regular habits. And I knew--or I'd known, before I went on the run--that attempts were being made by ecologists to reintroduce large predators back into the American wilderness. I thought about the wolves, about all these books on wildlife, thought about the antenna the man had been carrying when I'd seen him that first time. He must have been some sort of ecologist or ranger, and one of those wolves was probably wearing a radio collar--so this pristine stretch of land I thought just happened to have been left untouched must have been a wildlife preserve.

A mental "Of course, you idiot!" rang in my head. Wolves weren't likely to stay alive for long anywhere else. It had been so long since I'd thought about ecology in a wider sense that the only immediate impact those animals had on me was territorial. 

Shaking my head at myself, I went to the north side of the room, where there was a short hallway-foyer to the front door. A narrow table, on which was carelessly piled a stack of junk mail, abutted one wall close to the door. 

Teetering atop the pile was a small cardboard box that had been opened. I picked it up. The address label on the box read "Robert Bruce." There was a book inside. Maybe Robert Bruce lived too far away from any library to bother with borrowing. Or maybe, I thought as I read the title, this was one book he thought he really had to own.

__

The Mutation of Society, by Mary Elizabeth Morgan. My mother. Tears stung my eyes, and I set the book down before those tears could damage it.

This man--this Robert Bruce--had obviously ordered the book not long after encountering me. What did he think about me? Would he call out the law to find me and take me away from his precious wolf land? _So what are your feelings on the newest denizen of your forest, Ranger Robert?_

My quills rose and fell anxiously, and I decided I'd been in this human's house long enough. I stuck my head into each remaining room, a quick satisfaction of curiosity, but I stopped in the kitchen. Plastic grocery bags hung on the knob of one cabinet door. I grabbed one, opened the fridge, and started filling the bag. A loaf of bread. A block of cheese. There was a roast in the freezer, which I also took. Another bag. This one I filled with cans of vegetables, and I remembered to grab the can opener lying on the counter beside a pile of silverware.

Then my conscious cleared its annoying little throat, and I thought about what I was taking. It wasn't like Ranger Robert couldn't make an extra trip into town for groceries. It wasn't like I was stealing something valuable, like his stereo. The mental image of me lugging speakers into my cave, then trying to find an outlet, made me snort.

On the last patch of clean counter there was a notepad and a pen. I dropped the bags onto the floor, picked up the pen, and wrote, "Thanks for the food, ranger man. Oh--and your Luna likes to visit the gully a day's walk west of the highway."

Then I left. With the food, of course.


End file.
